


What Makes Us

by missmungoe



Series: At the Turn of the Tide [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: ASL Brothers, F/M, Family, Portgas D. Ace Lives, Portgas D. Ace-centric, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-03 15:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13999095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmungoe/pseuds/missmungoe
Summary: People are more than their names, but of all the names he could have imagined they'd honour, his father's was the last on the list.





	What Makes Us

**Author's Note:**

> Gosh, I keep adding fics to this AU. I blame a handful of shameless enablers. You know who you are.
> 
> Anyway, I got some requests for Ace's reaction to discovering that Shanks and Makino had named their son after his father. Can you say 'family fun times'?

“You did  _what_?” **  
**

The look Shanks shot him brimmed with amusement, taking in his incredulous expression, sharp features brightened with sudden offence and his brows furrowed deep, and the whole ensemble offset by the happy, red-haired baby cooing over the string of beads around his neck, although Ace seemed suddenly oblivious to the small, delighted attentions.

“We named him,” Shanks repeated, with insufferable patience. “It’s common to give them names—your kids. Calling them ‘you’ seems so impersonal, you know?”

Clearly unappreciative of his questionably appropriate glibness (although to be fair, most people in Shanks’ acquaintance were), Ace just stared at him, before he turned his gaze to Makino. “Roger?” he asked, as though for extra clarification, in case he’d somehow misheard. Shanks had a thought to ask if he wasn’t hoping that was the case, even as Ace added, disbelieving, “ _Why_?”

“Because all my other suggestions were brutally shot down,” Shanks answered, tossing Makino a meaningful glance, although he only feigned his offence; Ace’s was entirely in earnest. “A crime, if you ask me. Some of them were really good.”

“You went through my entire shelf of whiskeys,” Makino countered, and to Ace, said, “And hard as it might be to believe, I’m not being literal when I say that.”

“Hey, Jameson could have worked,” Shanks told her. “Johnnie, too.”

She raised a delicate brow. “And if it had been a girl?”

He didn’t miss a single beat, and chirped with a cheerful grin, “Talisker. Tali for short.”

She shook her head, but before she could say anything—no doubt to contest the notion that she’d ever consider naming their child after a brand of whiskey—“Either of those would have been better,” Ace told them both, looking between them, the gurgling baby still in his arms. “Seriously.  _Roger_?”

A sharp note lanced through the name, something harder than disbelief colouring his voice now; it had come to settle in his brow, and the tight press of his mouth.

As though sensing his rising agitation, the baby made a sound of distress; a tiny, bubbling noise that quickly swelled to a wail, before cresting in a startled  _shriek_. Ace winced, and reached over to hand him back to Shanks, who accepted the exchange with practiced ease, despite his lone arm, and the now screaming baby grasping his cloak for purchase.

Luffy had his hands pressed over his ears. “It’s  _loud_.”

“You think this is loud?” Shanks asked, voice raised to reach over his son’s wailing. “He’s got nothing on me.” And with a lewd wink at Makino, quipped, “Just ask my wife.”

From the common room at their backs, several groans rose to accompany the remark, although Roger’s screaming didn’t pause for breath, even as Shanks rocked him.

“What?” he asked, at the enduring look Makino gave him. He nodded at their son. “He’s too young to understand.”

“ _I’m_ not!” Luffy shouted, hands still over his ears, although seemingly for a different reason now, and Shanks laughed.

It took a few attempts of soothing to still the cries—and one impromptu rendition of a favoured shanty, loudly accompanied by the whole bar while the long-suffering subject of the song demonstrated her mortification by making a strategic retreat into the storeroom, before all that remained were the lingering sniffles muffled into the collar of his cloak, the humming dregs of the last chorus murmured against his son’s hair, and to the backdrop of their laughter, soft and breathless by the time Makino reluctantly emerged from her hiding place.

Ace was watching the baby, a pensive weight across his brow that was acutely familiar, although Shanks doubted it was a good time to point out that he looked his father’s spitting image with that expression.

Beside him, Sabo was frowning. “You okay, Ace?”

“Ace?” Luffy asked, when their brother made to slide off his barstool.

“I need some air,” Ace said, and before either of his brothers could ask anything else, he was making for the doors, his steps unhurried but a curious urgency thrumming in the tense line of his shoulders.

The soft whine of the doors left swinging in his wake lingered amidst the conversation, having descended to a manageable level.

Shanks looked to Makino. “And here I was hoping there’d be a few more years before we had to deal with our kids walking off in a huff of adolescent disagreement,” he mused, although he was already rising from his chair as he said it. And when he moved to hand their son over, she was there to meet him, pressing a kiss to his hair when a noise of distress left him at the prospect of separation, before she reached to gently pry loose the little fingers gripping the collar of his father’s cloak.

“You know,” Shanks told her, hand resting over their son’s back where she’d wrapped her arms around him, “you might have better luck with this conversation. He actually likes you.” Then, one brow arched, added, “Potentially a bit too much, from what I’m hearing, but I’m choosing to let that slide.”

The look she gave him was fond, and wholly knowing. “I think you know who needs to have this conversation.”

Shanks sighed. “Yeah.” He tucked a kiss to her brow, before reaching down to run his fingers over the baby’s head where he’d buried it in her throat. “At least you can’t walk out in a huff yet. Or walk, for that matter.” He looked at Makino. “If he pushes me off the docks and the sea king finally gets the rest of me, please know that I love you both. And that you wilfully sent me to my fate.”

She gave him a gentle shove towards the doors. “Stop teasing, or I’ll be the one pushing you off the docks.”

“Do I hear an implied offer to go skinny dipping? Because you know I’m always game.”

“Cap!” Yasopp called from across the room, before gesturing in the direction of the bar, where Luffy was making an impressive show of trying to physically melt into the bar-top. Sabo gave his brother a sympathetic pat on the back, as Yasopp laughed, “Have some mercy on the kid, jeez.”

Grinning, Shanks stuck his tongue out. “Fat chance.” And to Luffy as he walked out, “Welcome to the family, Anchor. Rest assured, there’s more where that came from. I haven’t even  _started_  embarrassing you yet.”

Then with a loud laugh drifting behind him, he pushed through the doors, and went to look for Ace.

It didn’t take long to track him down; he hadn’t gone further than the wharf, and sat with his legs over the side, watching the sea beyond the port, and the languid descent of the evening sun, dripping honey into the water. Shanks didn’t doubt that he’d felt him approaching, but said nothing to announce himself. And he had no problem talking enough to fill both sides of a conversation, but he also knew to recognise the times silence was the better alternative. It had been a long time since he’d been twenty and indignant, and frankly, pretty damn full of himself, but that was part of being young, and it was part of being old to respect that.

Of course, another part of being old was giving the young grief for their exaggerated dramatics.

“This is a good place to sulk,” Shanks mused, coming to a stop beside him, although he made no move to sit down. He allowed his gaze to sweep across the bay. There was no sign of the sea king. “Nice view. An appropriately melodramatic setting. Personally, I prefer somewhere a bit more public, where everyone can share my grievances whether they like it or not. Ben can attest to that, as can my lovely wife. I am nothing if not an excellent sulker. You are subpar at best, although I don’t doubt that you’ll get there with a little practice.”

“I’m not sulking,” Ace said.

“Of course you’re not,” Shanks agreed. “Although the first step of sulking is to vehemently deny the fact that you’re doing it. It really is a fine art.”

Ace cut him a look, which Shanks countered with an innocent lift of his brows. “What?”

He just shook his head, but the breath he let loose held a note of resignation, and, “Was there really no other name you could have chosen?” Ace asked.

Shanks shrugged. “Sure there was. Aside from Makino’s extensive liquor collection, we had a whole ledger full of options.” He cocked his head, his look meaningful. “But people are more than their names.”

“That doesn’t mean you had to force that one on him,” Ace snapped, and when Shanks only raised a brow, seemed to realise he’d let his temper slip. His expression contorted, and he turned his eyes back to the water.

Shanks said nothing, just watched him; his hunched shoulders, and the tattoo across his back, the ink distorted by a large burn scar, still pink even after nearly three years. But then he knew better than most that some scars took time to heal, and sometimes, even that wasn’t enough; regrets cut deeper than flesh, after all. He might have survived his own execution, but Shanks didn’t doubt that it had stayed with him; the charges that had been laid against him more than anything else.

Dragging a breath through his nose, Ace took his time letting it back out. “There are better legacies to honour,” he said at length.

“That may be,” Shanks conceded, “but we chose to honour this one.”

“It’s a burden.”

“Only if you make it one.”

Ace scoffed. “That’s easy for you to say.”

“No,” Shanks refuted calmly, frowning. “It’s not. It’s actually the opposite of  _easy_ , but I have to believe my kid has some power over his own fate, and that it’s not decided by the blood in his veins or the name we gave him. Otherwise, it would mean believing that I doomed my son just by fathering him, and that there’s nothing he can do about it.”

When Ace frowned, Shanks sighed. “You want to talk burdens? Look no further. A name is only that, but there are worse things my son might have to endure in his life that he’s gotten from me. And I’m not just talking about the hair.” He tried for a smile, although it felt forced; the breezy quip hadn’t come as easily as he’d hoped.

“I’m not much different from Captain Roger,” Shanks said then, and before Ace could open his mouth to protest, cut him off. “I may not be the Pirate King, but the Government doesn’t really care about distinctions when it comes down to it. A pirate is a pirate. And I’ve got no fans in Marineford, as much as it pains me to say it. I’m a likeable guy, but you can’t charm everyone. Believe me, I’ve tried. Old Tsuru has a soft spot for me, but I’m pretty sure if given the chance, Akainu would see me executed in a heartbeat. He wouldn’t bother with a public event. A shame, really—I’d put on one hell of a show.”

His second attempt at levity came a little easier, but it still didn’t budge the expression on Ace’s face, and Shanks’ smile softened. “You were ready to disagree when I said I wasn’t that much different from Roger,” he told him then, head cocked in consideration. “Why?”

Ace gave a shrug, as though to say the answer was self-evident, even as he offered it. “You’re not my old man. You’ve done good things, and Luffy likes you.” Then, this time with a wry, half-smile, “Makino-san does, too.”

“Hmm,” Shanks agreed, smile curving. “Yeah, I’ve been suspecting that for a while now. She did marry me, and she’s the mother of my child. I think there might be some affection there. Could be wrong, though.”

Ace rolled his eyes, and Shanks grinned over a laugh. “What?”

He shook his head. “You’re just different than what I thought you’d be, back when I was really eager to meet you,” Ace said.

“Gee, thanks?”

He sighed a laugh. “From Luffy’s stories, and Makino-san’s. I always imagined you being cooler.”

“…and once more I reiterate:  _gee,_   _thanks_?”

When Ace gave him a look, Shanks just grinned, before letting it soften. “I’m glad to hear there’s someone who thinks I’ve got a modicum of coolness, but Luffy’s experience doesn’t have to be yours,” he said. “Like my experience of your old man is my own. You’re entitled to your opinion, and your feelings, but it doesn’t change mine.”

Ace said nothing to that, but there was something like acceptance in the slight forward hunch of his shoulders, however reluctant that acceptance was in truth. But then, Roger had never conceded to anything without putting up a fight, not even petty arguments, and least of all reason. The blatant obstinacy was familiar, and a curious comfort—to see some things remain of the captain he remembered, in the son he’d left. This small, wholly human thing; a trait that didn’t have anything to do with the Pirate King, just the man who’d held the title.

Shanks wondered idly if anyone had ever pointed out that similarity to Ace, or if the legacy he dragged behind him like a cross was all from the pirate.

“Are you really that upset about it?” Shanks asked then, considering him where he sat on the wharf, the sinking sun bleeding the red from his hair. And Roger’s hair had been all black, Shanks remembered; the red tones had to be from his mother. It was a kinder legacy than his father’s memory, and one he carried without conscious thought, the weight of it unnoticed. Not unlike the stubborn press of his brow, or the calculating cleverness that sometimes entered his eyes; the little remnants of Roger that Shanks doubted Ace was even aware he possessed.

“Not upset,” Ace said, and when Shanks quirked a brow, amended, “Just…a little weirded out, I guess.” He looked up at him where he stood. “But you’re right. You have a different experience of him.”

“Well, yeah,” Shanks said. “I knew him, for one.”

“I don’t think knowing him would have changed how I feel.”

Shanks shrugged. “Maybe not.” A pause, and then, “Tell me something,” he said, and when Ace glanced up, asked, “Who told you about him? Roger. I imagine you asked, growing up.”

Ace didn’t answer immediately, his gaze far away, perhaps looking back to said childhood, forever a part of the island sprawling behind him, the opposite direction of the sea before him; the one he’d claimed as his own.

“Gramps,” he said then, after a pause. “And folks around the island. Oyaji told me some stories.”

Shanks hummed. “So, all fairly biased opinions, then.”

Ace raised a brow. “Like yours isn’t?”

“I didn’t say that,” Shanks was quick to counter. “But it’s a different perspective.”

“Still the same guy.”

Shanks grinned. “Yeah. And he was one hell of a guy, your father.” His smile eased a bit; sat a little gentler on his mouth. “And a better father than the one I was born to, anyhow.” At Ace’s dubious look, he lifted one shoulder. “That ship was home to me. That crew was my family. Still is, although Buggy would probably eat his own hat rather than admit it.”

Ace looked back in the direction of Party’s. “You’ve got another family now.”

“You say that like I can’t have both,” Shanks said. “Which you know isn’t true. You choose your families.”

“Not the one you’re born into,” Ace murmured.

“No,” Shanks agreed. “You can’t choose who you’re related to, but loving them as family is a choice.” When Ace’s look of reluctant consideration persisted, he sighed. “Look,” he said. “I’m not guaranteed that my son will grow up loving me. I can’t make that decision for him. I can only do my best to be a good father. The rest is up to him.”

“At least you’re trying,” Ace said.

“Roger would have tried,” Shanks told him, not half a beat missed. “If he’d had the chance. And you can ask both your grandfather and your captain and they’d probably tell you the same thing, whatever their personal feelings about him. I can’t guarantee that he would have been a good father, but he would have tried to be. Whatever that’s worth.”

A pause, before he added, “And my son will be his own person, regardless of the blood in his veins, and the name we gave him. He won’t be me, and he won’t be your father. Just like you’re not.”

Shanks allowed the silence to fill the space left behind his words, seeming to remain between them, as though imprinted on the air. The sea breeze cut with a tender chill, carrying the ocean with it, the lazy, steady push of the water against the wharf like a slow heartbeat.

Ace was quiet, considering the water, and the ships moored to the port. Shanks saw as he lifted his eyes, taking in Red Force’s considerable bulk, and the little lion nestled in her shadow. A curious convergence of fates, in such a small, seemingly insignificant port, but its importance was greater than its outwards appearance suggested. But then, greatness grew out of all kinds of soil, and under all conditions; it wasn’t measured in grandeur or fame. The most important things in his life had little to do with power or influence, or the name he’d made for himself. No, his legacy was more than that; was the kind, gentle heart of the girl he’d married, and the son that had come of it.

As though his thoughts had followed the same path, Ace looked up at Shanks then, the corner of his mouth lifting, along with the pensive weight across his brow, and, “She seems happy,” he said. “Makino-san.” He paused, before he added quietly, “Your kid, too.”

“Careful,” Shanks laughed, the sound too soft for his usual volume. “Someone might take that as approval.”

Smiling, Ace said nothing, but pushed to his feet. When he turned to walk back, Shanks fell into step beside him, an implicit offer and acceptance in the silent exchange. Not everything needed forgiveness, and not all forgiveness needed to be spoken.

“You know what is a good name?” Ace said then, as they set off towards the bar, the sinking sun and the sea at their backs, the island ahead. “Ace.”

Shanks’ grin was quicker than his laugh. “ _Wow_. The shameless narcissism is noted, and admired.” He made a noise of consideration. “In another universe, maybe we’d name him that. One where he’s not named after a whiskey, at least.”

Ace hummed. “Jameson  _would_  have been a cool name,” he agreed, and Shanks laughed, delighted.

“ _Right_?”

 

  
—

  
  
It took a little while for him to get used to it, but all new things become old, given enough time, and as the years passed, the novelty eased into familiarity, until there was little left of the initial weirdness, or of old, personal grievances.

He shored his vessel to the Fuschia docks one late afternoon, the last remnants of a spring shower having left the streets muddy and the air damp, and he breathed it all in as he stepped into the village proper, happy to leave the sea behind him for a little while, to seek the kinder heart of a familiar port; one of his many homes, although like families, Ace had long since learned that there was no limit to the number you could claim for yourself.

Striding across the porch, the soles of his boots muddying the planks, already bearing signs of a busy day with many patrons, a rap on the doorframe announced his arrival, and, “Hey,” Ace called, stepping through the bat-wing doors into Party’s common room. “Am I late?”

The man standing behind the bar looked up from the list he’d been reading, plucking the wire-rimmed glasses off his nose, a smile stretching along his mouth. Ace caught the gleam of silver in his hair, the veins thicker than when he’d been home last, although his shoulders were loose, an ease having come to settle that had taken years to get comfortable. But then leaving the sea was a process; Ace knew that as well as any pirate, and Red-Hair had been a pirate longer than he’d been alive.

“Depends on what you were hoping to reach in time,” Shanks said, inclining his head towards the storeroom, and Makino as she stepped through the door, pregnant stomach teeming under her apron.

“Ace!” she greeted warmly, brushing her hands over the considerable curve, and he had to blink his eyes at the sight. The last time he’d seen her, she’d barely been showing. “Welcome home.”

The greeting found a chorusing echo, rising up from the crowded common room, and Ace grinned, hand lifted in an answering salute. For all that he’d once associated Fuschia with quiet and slow, staggering boredom, things had changed, and it was rarely a quiet homecoming that greeted him, with the crew that had settled down with their captain.

 _On the subject of certain retirees._ Ace eyed the apron hanging off Red-Hair’s hips. “You look ridiculous.”

Shanks stuck his tongue out. “Say whatever you want—the tips I’m making in this speak for themselves.”

Ace looked to Makino. “You miss his pirating days or what?”

Her laughter was soft, creasing her eyes at the corners. She’d braided her hair, pale threads of silver woven through the dark, along with a bright red scarf. Motherhood suited her; it brought out a strange sort of brightness, tempered to something soft and gentle by the way she held herself, like the sun breaking through the surface of the sea, the glare calmed by the water. And she’d always been soft, and gentle, but there was something almost of another world about it now.

Ace often wondered if his mother had looked the same, when she’d been pregnant with him.

“Oh, no,” Makino said, flicking her eyes to her husband. “I actually like the apron.”

“See?” Shanks asked, pleased and making no point to hide it, but then Ace had never known him to try. He slipped her a wink, his arm snaking around her waist, to spread his fingers over the curve of her stomach. “Can’t take her eyes off me. Or her hands. It’s a miracle anything gets done around here. Well, other than me, anyway.”

Ace just shook his head, looking between them. Had he been younger, he might have made more of an effort to look sufficiently disgusted, but his smile had come to stay, even as he said, “I’m glad to see some things haven’t changed. Or disturbed. I never know which it is with you two.”

He swept his gaze across the room, and the people gathered; pirates turned farmers and fishermen and an assortment of curious souls between them. He saw his little brother’s crew, and a handful of former revolutionaries scattered among the tables, the common room filled to bursting. But one thing was missing.

“Where’s the birthday boy?” he asked the two behind the counter, forever caught in a bubble of their own make; the living heart of a bar that sat at the junction of so many different fates.

“He’s playing out in the fields,” Makino said, gently slapping her husband’s reaching fingers away, her grin too quick for her to hide her delight in the small attentions, although she’d always been terrible at hiding much of anything. But her eyes were warm, and her words earnest when she told him, “He’ll be happy to see you. He’s been waiting all day for you to arrive.”

Ace smiled. “Then I guess I shouldn’t keep him waiting.”

“Feel free to keep him distracted for a while,” Shanks called after him as he made to leave. “We’ve got inventory that needs doing. In the storeroom. In private. Wait, did I say inventory? I meant I have a wife to ravish. What?” he asked Makino, catching her gaping. “They’re not home that often, I’ve got to take whatever chance I get to mortify them! Roger isn’t old enough to get it yet, it all goes over his head. Not that Luffy’s much better—twenty-five years old, and he thought I was actually talking about inventory. Gives my barkeeping too much credit, that kid. You’re familiar with my particular work ethic—the only inventory I’ll do without complaint is cataloguing what’s under your skirts.”

Makino suffocated a helpless laugh with her palm, and Ace cheerfully flipped him off as he made for the doors, shaking his head, Red-Hair’s laughter chasing at his heels all the way off the porch and down the street.

It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for, his hair easy to single out amidst the open fields, the red lit bright by the sun creeping through the clouds stretched like gauze across the sky.

“Roger,” he called, the name sitting easy on his tongue after six years. It didn’t feel like his father’s anymore; didn’t immediately invoke his memory upon speaking. Now all he associated with it was the bookish, red-haired little boy with a smile too big for his face—the same smile that widened now, as Ace raised his hand in a wave.

“ _Ace_!”

His own name reached towards him, sounding shrill with excitement, before the boy followed, sprinting across the field towards the fence where Ace had climbed across it, to drop down on the other side.

He was out of breath by the time he reached him, pausing with his hands on his knees, heaving for air. Ace laughed, and was about to tell him to take it easy when his eyes caught on something familiar.

“I see Luffy already beat me to it,” he said, flicking the brim of the old straw hat resting against Roger’s back, the worn string pulled tight across his throat. “That’s some birthday present.”

Roger’s smile widened, bright and full of teeth. It curved his cheeks, round with youthful pudge and smattered with freckles. His father’s spitting image, but there was no resentment at the thought; the words that had so often been offered to Ace, although without kindness, and the echo of them found within himself whenever he’d looked in the mirror. “I know! Isn’t it cool?”

“I saw Sunny docked in the port, but he wasn’t at the tavern with the others,” Ace said. “You know where he went?”

An eager nod; his hair bounced around his face, cheerfully unruly. Ace picked out a rogue leaf stuck in it, as Roger said, “He went to see grams with Sabo-nii. I was gonna go with them, but I wanted to wait for you.”

Ace smiled. “Well, I’m honoured. And I’ll have to catch up with them later, but first,” he said, reaching up to lift his own hat off his head. He watched as Roger’s gaze tracked the movement, sitting wide and dark in his face. His mother’s eyes, full of the same, easily invited rapture.

Those same eyes widened even further as Ace plucked the strings loose, the ones holding the bone medallion, before he reached down to place it into the small awaiting hands, cupped to accept the sudden offering. “I bet your mom could sew this into the brim, if you asked,” Ace said. “She’s good with a needle.”

Roger stared at the medallion, little mouth agape, and Ace’s smile stretched into a grin. “It’s not the Pirate King’s straw hat, but that thing is getting really old. It could use a touch-up, if you ask me. A little extra flair.”

His delight was so intense, he looked at a complete loss for words, and Ace laughed. As much as he resembled his father in looks, he had a lot of his mother in him. And something that was uniquely his, weaving the two together.

“Happy birthday,” Ace said, reaching up to ruffle his hair, and got a startled grin in return, and a small, stuttered thank-you that spoke even louder than the telling brightness in his eyes.

“So,” Ace asked then, sitting back on his heels, “what else have you gotten? Was this year’s haul better than last year’s?”

His head bounced with an eager nod. “Uncle Ben got me a ship in a bottle. And Sabo-nii brought me firecrackers from the New World.” He lowered his voice, his whisper conspiring and his look full of familiar mischief, one that spelled  _Sabo_  with bright, bold letters. “Dad was excited. Mom was  _not_.”

Ace laughed. “I bet.”

Roger considered the bone medallion nestled between his palms; Ace watched as he fiddled with it, his excitement softening, although it was no less earnest. “I was hoping I’d get a baby sister, but mom says it’s not time yet.”

Smiling, Ace let a hum sit on his tongue. “I don’t think it’ll be very long, from the look of her.”

He got a grin for that, the quick curve of it holding a small secret, as Roger confessed, “Dad’s nervous. He pretends he’s not, but I can tell.” He frowned then, seeming to consider the thought. “I dunno why he is, though.”

Ace didn’t comment on that, and carefully kept his smile from faltering. He knew perfectly well why Red-Hair had concerns; his own mother hadn’t survived having him, after all. And the thought that the same fate might befall Makino—

Forcibly redirecting his thoughts, and the subject of conversation, although not so much that it would raise his suspicions, “Have you thought of a name for her yet?” he asked. “If it’s a girl.”

Roger nodded, his frown slipping right off his face, leaving his smile bright. Wholly unconcerned, the way it should be. “Mom wants to name her Emmy, after my grandma.”

“Yeah?” Ace mused. He only had vague memories of Makino’s mother. She’d been stern, he remembered, although not unkind. “What do you think?”

Roger shrugged his shoulders, mouth pursed with consideration. “I don’t know. Names are hard.”

Ace felt as his smile softened. “They are that.”

Roger’s grin showed all his teeth. “I really like mine,” he said. “I’m named after the Pirate King!” Then, correcting himself, as though Ace needed it, “The first one, not Luffy-nii.”

Ace reached out to lift the straw hat onto his head. It was still too big, the wide brim coarse where it slipped down over his brow and the straw worn, but the red ribbon was new, he saw. “That’s a pretty cool legacy,” he said, nudging the brim a little higher, like he’d done so many times with Luffy, growing up. It had been too big for him once, too. The king of the world.

Roger was still holding the bone medallion, clutched between his fingers with a child’s wordless reverence. And they were legacies in their own right, the hat and the medallion; a small patchwork of inheritance, but their combination making something entirely new. A little boy, red hair bright and his mother’s eyes ever-spellbound, and his name invoking an old, dead king, and a glorious age.

And there were better legacies to pass on, Ace knew, but what had come of the ones he’d been given—that easily-ignited wonder, and an innocence the world could afford now—there was nothing better than that.

“Hey,” Ace said, lifting back to his feet. “I want to stop by Dadan’s before dinner. Want to come with me?”

Grinning, Roger nodded. “Yeah!”

Reaching down, Ace took the medallion from his hands, to tie the strings together behind his neck, until it dangled down over the front of his shirt. “There,” he said. “So you don’t lose it.”

Small hands palmed the medallion, and he remembered suddenly the baby he’d held, years ago now, so easily delighted. And that delight was the same, Ace found, even if his first instinct wasn’t to shove it in his mouth. He’d grown up, his own person, regardless of what they’d left him; the things he carried with him, too light to call burdens, but none of them insignificant.

And children grew up. Tides changed, and governments, and it was a different world he’d grown up in than the one Ace remembered from his own childhood. A different sea, and a different Pirate King ruling it, but then that was their legacy; the ones who’d fought and died for it. Including his father.

“You know, you’re lucky your parents gave you that name,” Ace said, reaching down to adjust the straw hat on his head as they set off down the path towards the forest, and Dadan’s cabin, the mud drying under a cold spring sun.

“Oh yeah?” Roger asked, nudging the brim up a bit to look at him.

Ace grinned. “Yeah. After all,” he said, tone musing, “you could have been named after a whiskey.”

There was a pause; a single, breathless beat. Then—

“ _What?!_ ”

 

**Author's Note:**

> No matter which universe I write them in, Shanks and Makino always end up at the heart of this big, adopted family of mostly outlaws. I'm not saying I have a Thing or anything, but I probably have a Thing.


End file.
